The home of RobL...

Call me boring etc, here is the list of apps that I have taken off my facebook news feed:

21 Questions
Airline Manager
App Designer
Astrology
Bejeweled Blitz
Cafe World
Date of the Day
Farmville
Friend Facts
Friends for Sale
How original are my parents?
Island Paradise
iTunes 12 Days of Christmas app
Jungle Extreme
Little Warrior
LivingSocial
Mafia Wars
MindJolt Games
Movies
Music Challenge
My Zoo
Playstation Network
Snowball Fight
The Warlords
Vampire Wars
Word Twist
YoVille
Zoo World


These are listed in the rather obscure location:

Click on Home, then View News Feed, then scroll down to the bottom, then at the end of the list, click on Edit options, then select Applications.

Okay, so it has been a bit of a break since the last issue of East London Cyclist, but finally handed out - Cable Street with Dave W in the freezing cold, and Hackney Road with Dave T in the not so cold (although I made the mistake of putting too many layers on Thursday after being too cold on Wednesday at Cable Street.

East London Cyclist

Rules of hostels:

There will be a large, six-slot toaster. Only one slot will work properly, the other slots will not work, or only toast on one side. At breakfast, about 20 people will be attempting to make toast, and each new person that tries to use the toaster is warned about the faulty slots. They will assume user error and try anyway.

There will never be enough cups. Nobody knows why. (at least 3 cups too short)

There will not be enough pans of the correct size. (a dozen tiny saucepans when you are cooking pasta for 16 people, or only massive pans when you are just cooking for yourself.)

If you assume there will be NO oven or microwave... then there will be 3 of them. If you need an oven/microwave, there will not be any.

The " spare food" box will contain some or all of the following:
1 onion
1 large bag of flour/cornflour/sugar
1 heavy jar of instant coffee/pickled onions/pasta sauce
1 half full pack of spaghetti
1 small bottle of olive oil
2 or 3 big boxes of weird herbal or fruit tea bags i.e. rose hip tea.
1 Jif lemon juice
1 stock cube
1 can of sardines (no opening key)
1 half full pack of instant custard


You will break at least one obscure rule, for example "Use of the washing machines is not permitted after 7.30PM" - having arrived at 7PM with no clean clothes!

If you are staying in a group, with the room staying unlocked all evening, suddenly, the only person with the room key will have a fit of paranoia and lock the door. (Even if the hostel is miles from the nearest town, and you are the only people staying there.)

... You will be returning from the shower to find the door locked.

If you decide to do laundry together to save time, you will ask everybody many times if they have any laundry, to please give it to you, as you are going to put the washing machine on, and it should be left in this bag/in the laundry basket etc. Eventually you decide to put the washing machine on. When you return to the lounge and announce "Right.. I've put the laundry on..." there will be at least one idiot who says "Oh NO, I didn't give you mine yet!" somehow this will be your fault, even though everybody else got their dirty kecks to you on time!

There will be at least one person that assumes you have never used a washing machine before and cannot cope with the responsibility of it, and will personally supervise your washing machine skills.

Conversely, if you leave somebody else to it and assume they know what they are doing, you will find that they have put your delicates/synthetics in the dryer for 3 hours, or hung up only their own stuff while leaving everyone else's in a damp heap.

The thing that you really, really need to be dry before leaving, will not dry out. (or somebody will have covered it, or it will have fallen off the clothes line etc.)

Showers generally have two settings: Cold Fast, or Boiling Dribble. Some alternate between the two by themselves. If a push button shower, it will provide approx. 3 second blasts of lukewarm water before switching off.

There will not be anywhere in the shower room to hang your towel/put your soap etc.

There will be at least one door that bangs shut loudly, and most people will forget until it bangs, thus waking people up while sneaking in late or going to the bathroom in the dead of night.

Some idiot will always come into the room more than 30 minutes after the light has been switched off, and switch the light on.

The person arriving late will rummage about for far too long. They will have either velcro straps on lots of things, or a rustly plastic bag. They will attempt to undo the velcro straps or rustle the bag slowly, but you wish they would just get it over with.

There will always be one less set of sheets than is needed. If you were the last person to get to the room, you will have to deal with this, as somebody else will have nicked yours.

At least one person will snore and deny it the next day. "I never snore!"

The curtains and/or window will not fully close.

The bike shed will be full of old beds and other junk.

People are downloading karenskristmaskraka.mp3 again.

And without me mentioning it this year The legend that is karenskristmaskraka.mp3...

(don't say I didn' warn you. remember. I can never give you back those minutes of your life.)

Over the years, I suppose we have become spoiled by device manufacturers trying to woo us and sway our loyalties by making increasingly attractive looking, carefully styled products with sleek ergonomic lines, pleasing to the eye, well laid out devices to contend with the latest super sleek Apple and Sony devices.

Not so at LG Nortel it would seem. I mean, I'm not THAT bothered by aesthetics but when I saw these, the first thought that came into my head was... "Eurgh... UGLY..."




"I know, we've got this great idea for a cool new handset, loads of features, even biometric thumb print reader, lots of integration... But wait... what will it look like?... What will make people look at that device on their co-worker's or friends' desk and immediately think... 'Yes! I want one of those cool things!'... "




Yes! An ugly thing that's just basically a box. Maybe they ran out of time to develop something more.... cosmetically pleasing, and went for the old retro 1970s un-ergonomic look?

I am tempted to start a gallery of ugly devices.

Eye of the beholder and all that

Last night... A job I had been putting off for a bit, but needed doing, the once or twice a year fish tank filter clean. Actually, there are two filters, so I need to do this operation a few times a year.

Every 3 months or so, I replace the top pad only in one or other of the filters. This is usually enough to keep it going without having to disturb it too much.

The filter slowly gets clogged over time, so it needs a big clean - not just replacing the top pad - about once or twice a year. A sort of aquatic vacuum cleaner bag. The thing that really needs cleaning out is the coarse sponge at the bottom (which is a pain to get to) and the ceramic Efhimech at the bottom just needs rinsing out.

As I was doing a regular clean at the same time, Had taken some of the water away, and removed the glass lids to clean the algae off, which makes it a bit easier to get at the filter hoses at the back of the tank. (One of the spray bars had come off as the fish attacked it, so might as well fix that while I am in here...) I am not sure why the fish occasionally attack it, I think food gets trapped in the corner sometimes and there are scuffles. The spray bar is in the way.



Next, turn off the filter, close the valves and remove it. Take to bathroom for the next slightly messy bit of the job. Emptying the contents out into various buckets and rinse.



Replace pads with new pads that need replacing, empty the grime away. I think this looks worse than it is. It does not smell, as the bacteria have done their job and broken the waste down. I guess it is just like silt or fine mud.



Return the rebuilt filter to the aquarium and connect up again.



Job done again for another 6 - 12 months!

Have been poking about upgrading things.

"E-mail bragging...



People who 'complain' about how many messages they get sent, especially after they get back from holiday - 'I'm still ploughing through them!' Yes, well done. You're really fucking important.

I can't get this out of my head...

http://www.rathergood.com/bill

some people are just gits :-)

Well another hectic bike week over for another year!

Epic Glamour Ride with about 35 fabulously dressed people turning up: Owen's pics

Youtube - Glamour at the South Bank!

See if you can guess which one I am...